GRAFTON — For a brief second, Maureen Lemieux spoke in the present tense, her hand around a glass of iced tea as she sat in the kitchen of her Grafton home.

"Holly is 30," she said of her granddaughter.

What she meant was that Holly Piirainen would be 30 years old had she not been snatched away a short distance from Mrs. Lemiuex's summer home in Sturbridge 20 years ago.

She would be 30 had someone not killed her and left her body off an obscure path on Five Bridge Road in Brimfield where it would not be found until October.

Earlier this year, Mrs. Lemieux sat in her Grafton home and watched the news as three women held captive for about 10 years were rescued from a Cleveland home and their captor arrested.

"I thought, 'Why couldn't that have happened to Holly?'" she said, but then thought better of it, realizing the women had probably suffered terribly.

Holly has now been gone twice as long as she lived. Her family will note the somber anniversary today with a Mass at St. Philip's Church, where a stained glass window donated by the family 10 years ago depicts four children with Jesus.

Then they will head off to a funeral for a cousin killed in a motorcycle accident last weekend, their grief compounded by the loss of another family member who died younger than he should have.

On Monday they will do what they what they've always done.

"Take it day by day," Mrs. Lemieux said, her family members and Holly's mom, Christina Harrington, chiming in like children singing in a round: day by day, each one echoes.

On that sunny day in 1993, when Holly's brother returned without his sister from visiting a neighbor's puppies, their family began looking for her along Allen and South Shore Roads. Police were called and a lone sneaker — Holly's — winked up from the roadway. But she was gone.

The first day of the search passed and as the second day blended into the third, Karen Jolin, Holly's aunt, remembered, "I didn't want to find her." Because finding Holly could mean she was dead and as long as that didn't happen, there was hope.

As the search went on, the Piirainens learned that there had been some unsavory characters lurking around their neighborhood.

Richard Piirainen said police learned three sex offenders had been in the area. It both baffles and upsets him because no one has reported seeing anything.

"They must have been tripping over one another, all down there at the same time and nobody saw anything?" he said.

The family wonders why it's been so tough to track down the men from a local car repair shop who went to Five Bridge Road the day after Holly disappeared to jump-start a pickup truck.

"They might know something and they may not even realize it," Mrs. Lemieux said.

Christina Harrington is quiet. She says very little but sometimes cocks her head to the side and the resemblance to her murdered daughter is evident. Sometimes she interjects with a few memories of Holly. If she is reminded of Holly by something the child would have liked, she talks about that. In recent years she has had health problems and her sons, who both deal with the loss of their sister in different ways, have had their own issues.

Zachary Piirainen sometimes had difficulties his family attributes to his sister's death. Andrew Piirainen was injured in Afghanistan in 2011.

Life goes on in this family forever changed by tragedy.

And the investigation also goes on at the Hampden County District Attorney's office in Springfield.

Hampden County District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni vowed to review older cases in his detective's files when he was elected in 2010.

Holly's family feels he's done just that.

Every work day, State Police Sgt. Brendan M. O'Toole sidles up to his desk alongside the case files labeled Holly Piirainen. Many days, he works on that case along with the new ones being constantly assigned to the DA's staff.

After 20 years some might call the case cold but he never has, remaining confident and optimistic that someday, he will know who killed Holly.

"We just solved a case that was older than that: Jamie Lusher," he said.

Lewis Lent Jr., who's name has been raised in the Piirainen case, recently confessed to killing James "Jamie" Lusher of Westfield in 1992 and leaving his body in a pond in Becket. State police have searched the pond without finding the boy's remains but they will likely go back, investigators have said.

Sgt. O'Toole said in the 13 years he's been assigned to the Piirainen case he and other detectives have worked to eliminate suspects and to check out new tips, which still come in.

In January 2012 Mr. Mastroianni announced that investigators had linked a dead man from Springfield to the Five Bridge Road area where Holly was found. Not calling David Pouliot a suspect, he did term the discovery to be significant and Detective Capt. Peter Higgins said investigators continue to work on that aspect of the case along with many others.

Capt. Higgins has been working on the Piirainen case for 20 years — half of his state police career, and he notes he has no plans to retire. It is not because the case is unsolved, but rather because he finds satisfaction in his work.

When Holly's case was assigned to the Springfield office the records were computerized. It was the first time such a thing was done and Holly's family members said they felt reassured by the use of new technology.

Since then, advances in DNA and new scientific methods used in forensics have changed drastically, and investigators along with Holly's family hope those tools might bring about a resolution.

Like the family of Molly Anne Bish, the Warren lifeguard who was abducted from her post and murdered in June 2000, the Piirainens hope the media will flush out someone who has the information to solve the case.

Daniel Malley, a private investigator who a few years ago led investigators to a man he came across during a child custody investigation, said he agrees that while 20 years may make the case more difficult to solve, it is not impossible.

Mr. Malley, who runs Allegiant Investigations, said he still believes Gerald Battistoni, a convicted child rapist, is a person worth looking at in the Piirainen case. He told investigators about Mr. Battistoni when he realized the former confidential police informant had been in the Sturbridge area around the time Holly was abducted.

He said he Mr. Battistoni was also familiar with the Five Bridge Road area.

"Even though so much time has gone by, there is always a chance these cases will be solved," he said, adding that people often have a change of heart about keeping secrets and decide to share information that moves an investigation forward.

The two families formed a tight bond and offer advice to other families when children are missing. They tell them to use the media to get their story out — even if the police discourage it. They warn victims' families to stay close to their detectives, to call often and check in because investigators are busy.

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